How the USWNT Qualifies for the 2027 World Cup

The United States will not have to wait long to know whether it is going to Brazil. The route to the 2027 Women's World Cup runs through one game: a quarterfinal of the Concacaf W Championship against El Salvador on Friday, Nov. 27, in Mansfield, Texas. Win it and the U.S. is in. Everything after that is about a trophy and, for most of the field, the Olympics.

Here is how the whole thing works, and the calendar from now to the World Cup.

The W Championship is Concacaf's women's tournament, and this edition doubles as qualifying for two events: the 2027 World Cup and the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles. Eight teams play a single-elimination bracket in Texas from Nov. 27 to Dec. 5.

The U.S. and Canada were seeded straight into it. The other six, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Haiti, Jamaica, Mexico and Panama, won their groups in the 2025–26 Concacaf W Qualifiers. The quarterfinals are set: the U.S. plays El Salvador and Jamaica plays Costa Rica on Nov. 27, and Canada plays Panama and Mexico plays Haiti on Nov. 28. The winners of the first two meet in the semifinal on Dec. 1.

The format is kinder than it looks. All four quarterfinal winners qualify for the World Cup. The four losers get a second chance in a play-in round on Dec. 2, where two of them win places in FIFA's intercontinental playoff, the last route to Brazil. The semifinals, the third-place match and the final in Houston on Dec. 5 decide the Olympic places and the title, not World Cup places.

The Olympic rule has a twist. The U.S. is already in the 2028 tournament as host. The top three teams qualify, and if the U.S. is one of them, its place goes to the team that finishes fourth. So if the U.S. reaches the last four, finishing fourth is worth an Olympic place, and the third-place match matters as much as the final.

The U.S. and El Salvador have never played each other in women's soccer. The U.S. won the last W Championship, beating Canada 1–0 in 2022 on an Alex Morgan penalty in Monterrey.

Before Texas there is Spain. The U.S. plays the world champions twice in October, at Audi Field in Washington on Oct. 10 and at Subaru Park outside Philadelphia on Oct. 13. They are the team's first games in more than four months, since the June trip to Brazil, and the last before qualifying.

Spain is No. 1 in the world and the U.S. is No. 2. The U.S. has won three of the four meetings, but Spain won the last one, 2–0 in Pamplona in 2022. Before the Oct. 10 game the federation will celebrate the retirement of Crystal Dunn.

Emma Hayes' team has lost twice in 2026: 1–0 to Japan in Seattle in April, which ended a 10-game winning streak, and 2–1 to Brazil in São Paulo in June. Three days after that, it beat Brazil 1–0 in Fortaleza in a game with eight Brazilian red cards.

Then comes Brazil. The 2027 World Cup runs from June 24 to July 25, with 32 teams, 64 games and eight host cities. It opens at the Maracanã, and the final is there too. The U.S. has won four World Cups; it went out in the round of 16 in 2023. The first step back is Nov. 27.